Phom Penh

Who do we meet on the early morning bus to Phom Penh but the slightly unusual group of Robbie the Irishman, Barron the Texan and Gabriel the Brazilian who we had met at the Cu Chi Tunnels. When we arrived in Phom Penh the 3 of us, 3 of them and Tone (a Dutchman from a musical family whose siblings are called 'Rayme' and 'Bass') all set out looking for a hostel together. We found a perfect one with a massive bar/communal room and a free pool table overlooking the lake.

I don’t know enough about the Cambodian genocide to give a full history but here it is in a nutshell. A couple of French educated Cambodians lead by Pol Pot decided to create a utopian society, a perfect implementation of communism. The only way to this was if everyone was equal. They murdered intelligent people, people of non Cambodian ancestry, and virtually anyone they felt like. Cities were evil so they relocated everyone to the countryside with the plan of creating enough rice that they could gain any other commodity through trade with other communist states. The abolishment of money meant people could never leave the place of their birth as this is the only place they could claim food. All told about 25% of the Cambodian people died during the Khmer rouge regime which only finished in 1979. The Khmer rouge continued to have people on the UN council until 1992!

The world community knew nothing of the genocide in Cambodia and it eventually fell to Vietnam who themselves were plagued with political problems to march on Phom Penh and unseat the Khmer rouge. Far from being thanked by the world community Vietnam received sanctions for war crimes! However their job had been done, they saved Cambodia.

On our first day in Phom Penh we visited an old high school which was used to torture and murder men women and children, even newborn babies, we then went to the 'killing fields' so named as this was where thousands were buried in mass graves.

Today was Tom's birthday, after giving him his presents and generally embarrassing him we set out hoping to see a Khmer rouge trial, we weren’t let in. We then went to watch Robbie try (and fail) to shoot a chicken with a Tommy gun before going to see the amazing royal palace.

When we got home it was time to unveil tom's birthday cake. It turned out the cd we had bought with 'happy birthday' on it designed to be played at full volume in order to embarrass tom in front of the entire hostel didn’t work, so we had to sing. The cake was beautiful and am sure tom will add a photo. This seems like a good time to mention Lydia, a large French girl who simply would not shut up, normally found screaming 'GABRIELA' at a pitch just on the range of human hearing, we all agreed, the most annoying person in the entire world. Just as we were cutting toms cake she comes over, sticks her finger in, and then says, do you mind. And then has the audacity to ask for a bit, did she not realise we hated her, its not like we were subtle about it!

That night we went out for Tom's birthday, for more details perhaps contact tom directly.

The following morning there were some teary goodbyes as I left for Siem Reap with Robbie, Barron Gabriel and Tone, while the others left for the beach. We are due to meet up again in the next few days, so we will update our contrasting fortunes then.